The company said its earnings rose to $195 million, or 20cents a share, in its fiscal first-quarter ended August 31, from $150 million, or 15 cents a share, a year earlier, which excluded one-time charges.

Revenues rose to $1.7 billion from $1.4 billion, the Redwood Shores, Calif.-based company said.

The results might help stem concerns in recent quarters that the database market had matured, and that Oracle would have to turn to new businesses for future growth. In the last three quarters, Oracle's database license revenue growth has averaged 28 per cent in the Americas.

In the latest quarter, total revenue from sales of its database, other software tools and the services related to maintaining the databases for customers rose 25 per cent to $1.3 billion.

"Hopefully after three quarters in arow people are thinking, 'Gee, maybe things aren't so bad and Oracle is doing pretty well,'" Jeff Henley, Oracle's chief financial officer, said in an interview. "I'm feeling much better than I did several quarters ago."

Oracle stock rose $1.31 in after-hours trading to $23.44. The stock had risen 31 cents to $22.13 in regular Nasdaq trading. The results were announced after the end of regular trading.

The company had been hampered by erratic sales of its so-called applications software, powerful programmes used by companies to run their human resource, payroll and accounting departments. Oracle's rivals in the applications business, such as PeopleSoft Inc and SAP AG, have been growing faster.

Licensing revenue of its applications software was about flat with last year's, Henley said. Overall applications sales, which include consulting, servicing and maintaining the programmes, rose 37 per cent to $500 million.

Licensing revenue from its applications software rose 95 per cent in the year-ago quarter,making for a tough comparison this quarter, Henley said.

Sales of software that runs on Microsoft Corp's Windows NT operating system rose 49 per cent, as sales of NT have grown faster than the traditional Unix operating systems that powers large computer systems.

The company's Unix business rose 6 per cent and its overall Windows business grew 30 per cent.

Oracle also is widening its lead over rival database software programme Sequel Server from Microsoft, Oracle president Ray Lane said on a conference call with analysts.

"The gap keeps widening," he said.

Oracle is ironing out problems in its applications software sales force, where workers needed stronger training, Lane said.

"The US sales force is stabilising," he said.

The company recently had been losing employees to Internet start-ups as Internet stocks have soared. But Oracle expects that to change, helped by shaky global financial markets.

"Some of the Internet start-ups and high-growth companies look a little risky and that'll helpus," Lane said.